Artibus et Historiae no. 21 (XI)
1990, ISSN 0391-9064Up
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FRANCESCO COLALUCCI - "Muscipula diaboli"? A Pseudo-Mousetrap in the Adoration by Lorenzo Lippi in Washigton
The object on which Lorenzo Lotto signed and dated the Adoration of the Christ Child in the National Gallery in Washington, located in the lower right corner of the painting, has in the past been identified as a mousetrap. To this instrument - according to an old study by Meyer Schapiro - were attributed antidemonic powers of special symbolic significance related to Christ's incarnation. Closer inspection, however, reveals that the object is simply a piece of wood with a mortise at one end, of the type that was used in the sixteenth century to hold the stand of a picture frame. Deprived of a precise symbolic meaning, this holder constitutes an ideal linking element between the figure of St. Joseph, the carpenter whose handiwork it evidently is, and the painter Lotto who put his own signature on it. Lotto's interest in Joseph, which remained constant throughout his career, is connected with the cult of the saint that developed in Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth century, particularly in Bergamo, the city in which Lotto lived for twelve years, painting the Adoration of the Christ Child there in 1523. The signature on the piece of wood is, moreover, an allusion to the skills and tools of the artist's craft.
